


Screaming for What Was to Come, Now I'm Longing for the Way I Was

by RidleyMocki



Series: Pynch fics [3]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam freaks out over the prospect of leaving for college, Adam is warm for Ronans form ey ey, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Making Up, Opal is great but shes a little shit, Pynch Week, Swearing, an obscene amount of apricots, apparently my insides are marshmallow because I always end up in floof, argument, cw spiders, theres a long spider metaphor, they fight but its all fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 23:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11679633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RidleyMocki/pseuds/RidleyMocki
Summary: Adam had always known what he wanted: to get out of this damn town, dust trails in his rear view. But he never counted on the events of the last year that had made him tied to this place, and he'd never expected Ronan. So when Ronan discovers that Adam's been hiding his college acceptance letters from him, Adam has some explaining to do.Featuring Opal as the most bizarre and unapologetic ice-breaker.





	Screaming for What Was to Come, Now I'm Longing for the Way I Was

**Author's Note:**

> Done for Pynch Week 17 to the prompt 'College'. This one was super fun, I'm so intrigued by the way Maggie's characters would react when tested emotionally, especially in anger or hurt, so I hope I depicted it fairly accurately.
> 
> Regarding the spider metaphor: it's a cute metaphor, but there's description of a very big spider so beware, if you don't like them.
> 
> Regarding italics: restraint? What restraint?
> 
> Title is from 'Don't Save Me' by HAIM, because I thought the theme was perfect and that whole album is a shipper's dream.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy it! <3

“Parrish! Fuck sake!”

Adam grinned at the floor, grabbing his phone from the dresser and heading downstairs. Ronan was waiting for him outside. It was date night – _Jesus Adam, we’re not fucking forty_ – which meant he and Ronan were going for pizzas and driving around the town, and very probably pulling over to the side of the road to make out, before coming back to the Barns in the early hours of the morning tired and happy. It’d become an accidental habit, but a good one.

He stepped out of the house and saw Chainsaw circling overhead, the sky nearly pink in the dwindling light. They’d agreed to take Adam’s car instead of the BMW, and by agreed he meant that he’d bitched Ronan out about wanting to race every time they went out and it got solved by them taking the ‘shitbox’ so that Ronan wouldn’t even be tempted. Adam walked around to the side of the house and saw Ronan’s head in the passenger seat through his back window.

Twirling his keys around a finger Adam got into the car and said, “So impatient for date night, Lynch, you have to holler at me?” He’d been too busy watching the sky that he only really looked at Ronan when he got no response. Not a snort nor a slap to the arm, nothing.

Ronan was staring at his lap, where his hands tightly held several pieces of paper. The glove box in front of him was hanging wide open and envelopes were spilling on the floor. Adam felt his heart drop into his stomach. “Shit,” he said, and clenched his fingers around the wheel.

“Princeton. Harvard. Yale.” Ronan listed the first three he held and flipped through the others. “Adam what the fuck is this.”

“I got in,” he said, voice flat. He couldn’t look at him. Feeling the fear of a disowning look and cutting words like a cold hand down his spine.

“I can see that.” Ronan flipped through the pages again. Adam swallowed, hard.

Panic slipped down his throat and in a second he’d ripped his key from the ignition and got out of the car, barely keeping himself from breaking into a run, and made a hasty and humiliating retreat back into the house. Chainsaw screeched overhead.

Ronan followed him with a slam of the car door. Because of course he did. 

“Shit.” Adam stared out the living room window and pulled at his hair fretfully, trying to gather his thoughts, trying to gather some sort of explanation. It didn’t have to be accurate, it just had to be good enough to not break things further. But he huffed at himself, because Ronan was an asshole but he always told the truth and it made Adam feel like he owed him the same. Dammit. 

He heard Ronan step carefully into the room, and it was worse than if he’d come barging in.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Adam turned around to face him. “I was going to. I just– I couldn’t, not yet.”

“Why not?” Ronan bit. “I know you’re going to college. I’m not a fucking flower. You don’t have to tiptoe around me.”

“Shit! No! That wasn’t it.” Adam stepped closer. “Have I ever treated you like that, ever?”

“Then what is it? I was _waiting_ for these to come,” Ronan slapped the letters in his hand down onto the side table. “I was waiting to congratulate you! And do dumb shit like call the others and throw a fucking party. I was looking forward to supporting my boyfriend on some of the biggest news of his life, and now I find out you didn’t even tell me? What the _fuck_.”

“I was angry!” Adam said, frustrated. _Jesus_ he felt like shit. That was… that was a lot. Ronan didn’t talk like that, ever. He saw Ronan’s face close off and quickly amended: “Not at you, idiot. At me. At myself. I was angry at myself and frustrated as hell and I couldn’t tell you or the others and have them be excited when I couldn’t join you.” 

Ronan stilled, confusion passing over his face. He didn’t exactly look like he relaxed so much as his anxiety shifted to focus on Adam. “You got into the top ivy league schools, Parrish, what the hell?”

Adam ran a hand through his hair. “Exactly! I worked my _ass_ off – for years – to get this. I wanted to get out of this bullshit town and never look at it again. And instead, I opened those letters and – and I was happy, for sure, I was satisfied or something – but I was also just… sad.”

Ronan’s eyebrows flew upwards. It was about as openly expressive as his face got and it looked absolutely ridiculous on him. “Sad,” he said flatly. And Adam got it, really, the fact that he was being stupid, but. But.

“I don’t want to leave.” It came out choked. He cast his eyes over the room, the living room of Ronan’s home. There was the couch where he first traced Ronan’s tattoo. The rug they’d all sprawled across and laughed together the night of Ronan’s birthday. Through the doorway Adam could see the table where he ate cereal with Opal nearly every day in comfortable silence. And in the corner was the piano he’d pushed Ronan against last night, taking him apart with his mouth and the hands Ronan loved so much. 

When his eyes finally returned to Ronan, he found his shoulders were still tense but his expression was soft, the uncommon way when he was too surprised to paste over it with a scowl. Ronan visibly swallowed. “When did that happen?”

Adam bit his lip. “Bit by bit, I think. I’m not actually sure if I stopped wanting to run away, or if I just ran here.” There was something about the Barns that undid the knots in Adam’s shoulders, he felt it as he drove over the ridge and caught the first glimpse of the wild grasses. Gansey had once called it fairyland, offhandedly. It felt that way; somehow removed, liminal. 

The others loved this place, too. But there was a reason that Adam kept coming back, that this place had sunk into his bones and cradled him, and that reason was standing in front of him, frowning like he didn’t know what to do.

“You have to go, Adam. You can’t _not_ go.” It was gratifying, in a way that made him feel a little guilty, that the words were obviously difficult for Ronan to say. He didn’t want him to leave, either.

“Of course I do, I know that. And I want to. Go to college, the whole nine yards. Doesn’t mean I want to leave here, though.”

Ronan crossed his arms. “You’re making it sound so final.” His voice was hard. “Is it?”

“ _No_ ,” Adam said immediately. Ronan gave him a look like he didn’t believe him. “Idiot,” Adam grumbled, and walked the five steps between them in a heartbeat. He leant over the wall Ronan’s arms put between them and kissed him. 

Adam had seen a nature documentary once where the researcher – who was a crazy person as far as Adam could tell – tried to coax a bird eating spider out of its hole in the Amazon rainforest so they could look at it. But every time they came close, it spooked and scuttled back into its dark hovel. No matter how softly they approached it, it didn’t feel safe in the light. 

Sometimes, when Ronan got like this, careful and shut down, he reminded Adam of that damned spider; forced to be observed when he didn’t want to be, itching to flee no matter how fearsome he looked. But he was only scared, and Adam was the crazy idiot who just had to be patient. So he kissed him firmly, and raised a hand to splay across the base of Ronan’s skull. 

When Ronan leaned the slightest bit into him, Adam knew he’d won. He untied Ronan’s arms, grabbing his hand and drawing it to his own waist, and in a second Ronan was pulling him close. Adam felt Ronan’s fear leak into the kiss like Ronan wanted him to feel it, to realise it, and at the same time that Adam felt terribly guilty for scaring him like that, he was also amused. Because this is what they were, the hopeless boys who paid each other back for their meanness with elbows to ribs and punches to arms and kisses that stung. 

He smiled into the kiss, and Ronan pulled back from him. “Smug bastard.”

Adam grinned at him, rubbing his hands over Ronan’s shoulders and down his chest. “It’s not my fault you’re so easy, Lynch.”

Ronan growled and kissed him again. 

They parted long enough for Adam to say against his lips, “I’m going to go to college. And I’m going to come back here. As often as I’m able. Just you wait, I’ll be graduating before you know it.” 

“You say that like I’m not gonna dream up a way to see you more often.”

“If you used your damn _phone_ we’d technically be able to see each other all the time.”

“Gross. I’m not Skyping my boyfriend, Parrish. I have a reputation.”

Adam snorted. “Yeah, sure. I give it a week.”

“Asshole,” Ronan said into his cheek, and started nibbling at his ear.

Adam was gasping and ready to suggest they move this upstairs when the back door slammed open, letting in a gust of sweet summer air. Opal appeared in the doorway and trudged through the living room with what could have been a growl or a purr, depends, rising in her throat. Behind her she dragged a pluming tree branch twice the length of her own body, pulling it through the adjoining door into the kitchen without sparing the two of them a glance.

“What the fuck is she doing now?” Ronan sighed, thumbing Adam’s hip.

“Should we check?” Adam already knew the answer, but damn, her goddamn timing.

“Probably,” and Ronan pulled him by the hand into the kitchen, where immediately around the corner they had to hop over the leafy mass of the branch. 

Opal was sitting at the table with a circlet of leaves on her head and dirt smeared on her cheeks and arms, hoofed feet swinging. 

“What, destroying the tree wasn’t enough? You had to drag it in here and mess up the house, too?” Ronan kicked at the leaves. Opal stuck her tongue out at him, petulant and ridiculous, and Adam smiled at her from over Ronan’s shoulder. She caught his smile and Ronan slapped him in the stomach. “Don’t encourage her.” Adam laughed at him.

Without further prompting Opal leaned precariously out of her chair to reach the leaves closest to her, and drew back with her small palms full of even smaller bright orange fruit. Apricots. Adam looked at the branch again, and sure enough, under the green he could catch the blush colour of lots of tiny apricots. Opal threw one at Ronan and, surprisingly, he caught it in mid-air before it could hit his face. Adam raised his eyebrows at him. “Oh, shut up.”

Adam reached down and grabbed an apricot from the branch. “Are these real fruit or dream fruit?”

“Fuck knows,” Ronan said, “Can never be sure what dad put on these grounds, but I’m pretty sure they’re not mine. They’re Schrodinger’s apricots.”

“That’s not–“ Adam caught the smirk curling Ronan’s lip as he bit into an apricot. “Yes,” Adam said flatly, “they’re Schrodinger’s apricots. That’s exactly how that experiment went.”

Ronan snorted unattractively at him and Adam split his apricot open with his thumbs more than a little viciously, because it wasn’t unattractive at all. But it should have been, dammit. 

Opal watched as they both ate – the sweetness of the fruit making their eyes close, the occasional tartness bursting over their tongues – and looked pleased in the quiet, sharp way she had. 

“Take a basket out to the tree, next time,” Ronan groused.

_The last storm, the lightning did it_ , Opal said.

_You could still take a basket to the branch_. Ronan replied, his Latin easy as always. 

It didn’t annoy Adam like it used to, to think that Ronan was better at it than him. Adam couldn’t pull things out of his dreams, either. It was good that they were different, and accepting it meant Adam got to appreciate Ronan’s talents. _Thoroughly_ appreciate them. There were some things in Latin Ronan had only ever said in the newborn hours of the morning, against too warm skin and with his voice strained. Adam wouldn’t have been able to have that if he were still worried about comparing the two of them to each other.

Opal threw another apricot at Ronan’s scowling face and Adam laughed. They were like siblings. Blue joked that Ronan was a stay-at-home dad these days, and in a way Opal was his – he had brought her to the world from his dreams, after all. But Opal wasn’t a child. Whatever time they’d spent protecting her she had returned in aiding them, being a guide, and there was an eeriness to her that could be off-putting, but which Adam was always drawn to. It was like she could see all the time that had ever been, and all the time that would ever be, all at once. 

The three of them were all the outsider things, the weird ones, creatures. Opal had hoofed satyr legs and was a native Latin speaker. Adam was metaphysically connected to a magical forest which once manifested a thorn in mid-air just to freak out his father. Ronan would alternately wake up with scratches on his arms that weren’t of the fun variety, or with a happy swarm of lightning bugs above his head. Everyone had baggage. 

They were in a house full of dream things on land populated by impossible animals. Some nights, when Ronan’s breath was very quiet and the air was sticky with heat, Adam would go onto the back porch and watch the grass move in the moonlight, and feel like nothing outside of this place was real.

He knew, as he put on a pot of coffee and watched the other two growl at each other, that his earlier conversation with Ronan wasn’t over yet. He hadn’t explained well. It wasn’t just about the Barns, or about Ronan. He’d miss both, more than he wanted to think about, but it wasn’t going to be a permanent separation. 

He was sad because here he felt decidedly _Other_ , the seer of the forest, the Magician. He pushed his otherness to the point of deep, trembling pride, built himself around the idea that he could never go back.

The letters Ronan had found in his glove box weren’t just inviting him to college, they were summoning him back to normalcy. Back to the mundane. There was no 300 Fox Way at Princeton. No magical lightning bugs, or mythical girls who dragged half an apricot tree into people’s homes. There would be no white elk, or margarita night with women who insisted they weren’t witches, or laughing afternoon sex in a room above a church. 

And maybe, there could be no Magician.

Adam hadn’t expected to know who he was in a way that so depended on Henrietta, hadn’t expected to build anything about himself other than the constant survive, survive, survive, and the exhaustion that he resented. But being Cabeswater’s eyes had made him someone, being loved by Ronan had made him someone, having sat in a room of people that would hug him and look at him with affection had made him someone. And he wasn’t sure he was ready to leave and go be somewhere where he was no one, again. 

He always thought he’d go to college to make something of himself, but now he feared he’d be _re_ made, and knew he didn’t want to be.

Coffee cups in hand, Adam stepped carefully over the branches and set a cup in front of Ronan where he sat at the table. Ronan swiftly leant in and nipped Adam’s wrist as he withdrew, and Adam’s heart swooped and swayed. He didn’t want to miss this. 

On the table, Opal had created a grim little pile of the stones from the apricots she’s eaten, and it sat there looking like a pyramid without its uppermost point. As he sat down, Adam drew the stone from the fruit he’d had earlier from his pocket and placed it on top.

Opal smiled up at him, sharp teeth and all.

“You still wanna go out?” Ronan asked him. Adam looked at him for a long second, checking in with his own body. He was tired, tired and unsure.

“Nah,” he said, “I feel like I need a damn nap.” Ronan smirked at him, but his eyes were warm, and he just nodded. 

They sat drinking coffee in the orange light through the window, silent until the sun dipped behind the hills and they would need to turn on some lights. Under the table, Ronan put his hand on Adam’s knee, and quieted the fear in him that the future would change things.

_People change the places_ , Opal muttered. Adam looked at her in surprise. She nodded once, like she was satisfied with her statement, and reached into the leaves to pick another apricot. 

People change the places. Not the other way around.

He brought his hand down on top of Ronan’s, passed his thumb over his bones. Adam certainly hoped so.

**Author's Note:**

> The temptation to add about another 4k to this was so strong, honestly. I might do a follow-up with Adam actually at college and navigating that transition but this part I'm fairly happy with. They're massively in-love dorks and I love them.
> 
> Kudos are LOVE, Comments are LIFE. Be sure to drop me either if you liked this. Doing both will earn you good luck with the universe, or something.
> 
> If you want to watch me flail, have opinions, and swear a lot, check out my [tumblr](http://ridleymocki.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
